December 3, 20132013 review: January/Feburary

Hi everyone! With the year coming to a close and not many releases scheduled for December, I’ve decided to start a new segment. I’m going back and revisiting albums released in 2013 that I haven’t spent enough time with. I’m planning on making six posts, one for every two months. Let me know if I’m missing anything important!

#1: ‘Push the Sky Away’ by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

I’m embarrassingly unacquainted with Nick Cave’s work, but I had heard so much about this album that I decided to give it a listen. If I had to describe it in two words, they would be “minimalist” and “poetic”. Cave wastes no lyrics and adds no unnecessary frills. the music is a bit unsettling, but there’s something very appealing about it- it flows almost like it’s part of Cave’s stream of consciousness.

#2: ‘Anything In Return’ by Toro Y Moi

I was unsure about this album at first, but it’s definitely a grower. For lack of a better term, it’s a mixture of chillwave and R&B, but no matter how you describe it, it’s certainly sonically pleasing. It’s the sort of album you would put on if it was a rainy day but you weren’t in the mood for acoustic guitar ballads.

#3: ‘Amok’ by Atoms For Peace

Right off the bat, I’m reminded of Radiohead’s ‘The King Of Limbs’. (Of course, this may have something to do with the fact that Thom Yorke is a member of Atoms For Peace.) If you took a Radiohead album and replaced most of the instruments with synths and bursts of electronics, I imagine it would sound something like ‘Amok’. Not my cup of tea (though I do love TKOL.)

#4: ‘{Awayland}’ by Villagers

I’m hesitant about folk music in general, just because there’s so much lifeless folk stuff out there. Fortunately, ‘Awayland’ does not lack variety. The acoustic guitar is still there, but synths and ambience have been added. And it’s smart, too; the lyrics are masterful. As Colin O’Brien sings in “The Bell”, “There is a sleeping dog/Under this dialogue.”

That’s it for the January/February roundup! Let me know if there’s anything from the next two months that I absolutely need to check out.